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curiousdannii ♦
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Lee Woofenden
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What is the biblical basis for the belief that some people will live eternally on earth?

In a well-known passage, the Apostle Paul writes:

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, emphasis added)

This suggests that Paul was thinking in terms of an older cosmology, in which angels were believed to live in the sky (the New Testament Greek word for "sky" is the same as the word for "heaven"), and that he is here saying that those who are saved would live forever with the Lord "in the air," like the angels, and therefore not on earth.

The final two chapters of the Book of Revelation, about the New Jerusalem, begin:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21:1–2)

Here there is mention of a new heaven and a new earth. However, although the New Jerusalem is seen as coming down out of heaven from God, there is no mention of the New Jerusalem actually touching down on the earth. And its description of being just as high as it is wide and long (Revelation 21:15–16), suggests a city that is seen high above the earth rather than one built on the surface of the earth as the original Jerusalem was.

However, some groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, believe that many or all of those who are saved will live on earth rather than in heaven after the resurrection.

What is the biblical basis for this belief?

I am especially interested in any Bible passages stating in an unmistakable way that any resurrected people will live on earth. Failing that, I am interested in Bible-based arguments that some or all people will live forever in their resurrected bodies on earth rather than in heaven.